


little birds

by mayfriend



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: Child Soldiers, Gen, Gotham City - Freeform, Grief/Mourning, Mental Health Issues, Obsessive-Compulsive, POV Outsider, gotham gothic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-18 04:44:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21622015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayfriend/pseuds/mayfriend
Summary: Robin is a child. Ten years later, Robin is still a child. You try not to think about it.
Relationships: Gotham City & Robin
Comments: 21
Kudos: 295





	little birds

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by therobincentral’s [post](https://therobincentral.tumblr.com/post/186898392123/gotham-gothic) on tumblr.

You think Batman is a myth at first. You’re by no means the only one. It certainly sounds like something made up on the fly after a couple too many beers - a man, dressed all in black, beating up the criminals you’ve spent a lifetime learning cannot be beaten. It’s a story, an urban legend, and a part of you wishes you’d been the one that thought of it; it’s outlandish and wild and makes you feel a little wistful. You think Gotham really could do with a protector, but you’ve lived here long enough to know there’s never going to be one coming.

Like most people, it takes seeing him with your own eyes to make you a believer. A shape, flashing across the rooftops; a shadow, moving to drag the mugger away from you with one arm. He scares you almost more than the trembling gun pointed at your chest, with his bared teeth and harsh movements. Muggers at least were human shaped.

You run. You haven’t survived this long in Gotham by being stupid, but after that night, you pay a bit more attention to the stories.

* * *

Half a year later, you hear that Batman’s got a partner - a sidekick, an apprentice, a protege. A _child_. You know better than to think it a myth this time.

You have trouble sleeping, worse than normal. You have frenzied dreams about the crack of bones, birds in flight and teeny, tiny coffins.

You never had children. It is days like this that make you glad of that.

He’s only a boy, you think. He’s only a little boy, like Al once was. Al had been brave too, and proud, and good. You know what happens to boys like that in Gotham; sooner or later, the city eats them alive. Everybody knows. Batman must. So _why_ , you want to scream (but when don’t you), does he do it?

Why put a green-yellow-red target on a little boy’s back? Why let him mouth off at villains worse than any storybook horror? Why, why, why?

You never saw Al’s body. Your mother knew you were too young to see a thing like that, and you know she was right, but it means that your mind is always groping around in the darkness for how he looked, cold and long and empty.

You dream he was wearing red, you dream he was wearing green, you dream he was wearing yellow.

He was a good boy. He was a little boy. He was a boy, and it didn’t matter, not one bit.

* * *

Robin flies through the skies, and you’re always waiting for the day he stops like it’s a noose around the neck. You stopped praying a long time ago, but you never step on cracks in the sidewalk. You count the spaces between cars that pass in swallows, knot your fingers into crosses and bite your fingernails down to the quicks.

This is Gotham, home of freaks and monsters and madmen; these rituals are nothing, nothing, but you can’t stop. Everybody copes in different ways, and this is yours; you crane your head up to the sky, always watching for the yellow cape, the child’s laugh, and you beg the city to keep him safe with your patterns.

* * *

You hear, years later, that he’s dead. Your body goes cold and numb and stiff, like a cadaver, frozen with terrible knowledge. You can’t remember if you crossed your fingers walking home the night before.

It’s your fault. It’s Gotham’s fault. It’s Batman’s fault.

You were so careful. You turned the lights on and off twelve times so they were even, so they were right. You never looked anyone on your morning commute in the eye. You never ate after 5pm. You did your best, you followed the rules, you don’t know how to do anything else after a lifetime spent searching for order on Gotham’s uneven streets.

* * *

Al was the one who taught you how to cartwheel, a thousand years ago. You got gravel in your knees and scrapes on your palms and knots on your forehead, but you learned. Gotham teaches hard lessons, always has, but you think this one might be too much for you to bear.

(But you do bear it. You’re Gotham born and bred, and you can’t help but bear everything this city has to offer.)

* * *

It’s a year before you see Robin again. You think he’s smaller than he was. You think death, real or rumoured, should be enough to make the Bat realise that there’s no place for a child on his crusade. You think about Al, and wonder if only superheroes get second chances.

That same night, you get a lungful of Joker venom along with half of Gotham, and lose the next three days in a haze of pain and laughter. When you come back to yourself, you’re rocking back and forth, back and forth, on top of Al’s overgrown grave. You’re bleeding and sore and you wouldn’t know how to get home if you tried.

You don’t know why the condition of the small plot surprises you. Your mother’s been dead for eight years, and you’ve haven’t come here in even longer. You tear your hands half to shreds wrestling with the brambles and ripping away the weeds. It grows dark around you, and yet you can’t see a single star.

“You alright, miss?” A voice asks, and you sob in the affirmative. “Are you sure?”

You open your mouth, and nothing comes out. Your eyes are stuck on his green boots.

“I thought you were dead,” you choke out. “Everyone thought you were dead.”

Robin doesn’t reply. You wonder if you even said anything out loud. “You need the antidote,” he says, holding out a small syringe with a plastic ball on the end of the needle, “Otherwise it’ll only get worse.”

You think about telling him that it gets worse no matter what you do. You’re so tired, you think about telling him, the kind of tired that rest won’t fix. You’re so lost, and this city is meant to be your home, but instead it’s your prison. You’re going to die here. The only question is when.

Instead, you hold out your arm. You can’t count if you’re mad, and maybe this time round it’ll work.

* * *

Your cousin has a baby, calls her Alexandra. You think she’s crazy, bringing a kid into a world like this. You sound out the four syllables, and decide quickly you’ll call her Lexie to miss that oh-so-painful beginning.

She’s a loud baby. She sleeps through the night, which is a relief because Carla lives in the same building as you, the same hallway, but she’ll spend half the day screaming and whining over nothing in particular. You walk with her when Carla and Dan are too tired, up and down the corridor, up and down, counting your footsteps, making sure it’s always an odd number before you step over the threshold of the apartment.

You don’t mean to love her, but you can’t help it. You can’t help it. You wish you could, because you remember what happens to children in this city. You can never, never forget.

When Lexie’s two and a half, Dan and Carla get caught in the crossfire of one of Two Face’s attacks - she’s too big for it really, but Lexie is kicking and screaming at the top of her lungs because Mommy and Daddy aren’t there to tuck her in, so you start walking again.

“I’m sorry,” you murmur, your words lost beneath her weak sobs, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

* * *

(You’ve tried to leave before. Everyone has, at least once. Nobody, to your knowledge, has ever managed it. For Lexie’s sake, you try again. You don’t even make it to the city limits this time.)

* * *

You like ( ~~hate~~ ) multiples of four. When Lexie’s four, she goes to school for the first time, and you make yourself sick from worry before lunch.

You know what happens to children in Gotham. You wish you could forget.

At the end of the day, she barrels towards you, a grimy piece of paper in her equally grubby hand. She dances around you, chattering about her new friends and the games they played and her new teacher, before presenting the crumpled sheet to you with a proud smile.

“It’s beautiful,” you tell her, even though it’s really just a mess of red and green. “What is it? A Christmas tree?”

“No-oo,” she says, “Auntie, it’s Robin!”

You look again. You can make out four stick limbs and an oversized head if you squint.

“Robin, huh?” You say, and you’ve gotten so good at pretending to be okay that your voice doesn’t shake and your face doesn’t flicker. “Why Robin?”

“Cause I’m gonna be Robin when I grow up!” She crows.

“No.” You say, before you know what’s happening. “No, you’re not. You will _never_ be Robin.”

Her little face falls, and her cheeks get red. She starts sniffling, but you can’t find it in yourself to take back the words, even as wet hiccups turn into loud sobs and the other parents start turning to look at you with disapproving eyes.

Robins don’t grow up, you’d tell her, if she was old enough to understand. Robins get hurt. Robins get killed. Robins disappear, and they don’t come back.

She’ll never be Robin, you swear to Carla’s ghost, to Dan’s, to Al’s, to that boy in pixie boots who is still in his grave, who is still on the rooftops, who is still dying every day for this shitty fucking city and everyone in it. She’ll be Robin over your dead body.

(You realise, later, that the Robin’s parents probably thought the exact same thing.)

Robins don’t grow up. But by whatever god is listening, you swear she will.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/_mayfriend_) and on [tumblr](http://mayfriend.tumblr.com/)!


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